


Memories Are Mapped Out (By the Lines We'll Trace)

by kataurah



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, Pillow Talk, Post-Season/Series 04, Romance, Scars, Smut, re-post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24263170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kataurah/pseuds/kataurah
Summary: Abby Griffin has a map of Marcus Kane in her head.
Relationships: Abby Griffin/Marcus Kane
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Memories Are Mapped Out (By the Lines We'll Trace)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a re-post of a fic I previously took down.

Abby Griffin has a map of Marcus Kane in her head; a map that has been drawn slowly, sometimes unconsciously, over the course of several decades. If it were a real, physical thing that she could hold in her hand, Abby doesn't think it would be too bold a claim to say it is the most detailed map of him in existence. It isn't just his body; though she has intimate knowledge of that _now_ , it came as a later addition compared to many of the other things in her map. It is the pathways of his mind, the depth of his soul, the limitless capacity and strength of his heart, and the weight of the past on his penitent shoulders.

It is the knowledge of how to push his buttons: to drive him to the edge of frustration or pleasure. It is the palette of Marcus' colours, from the gold strands in his hair as they catch the sunlight, to the silver in his beard, the paleness of skin that has never been kissed by the sun, the untold shades of brown in his eyes. It is a thousand different expressions, the many different timbres of his voice, and all the ways he has ever said her name. The smell of his hair and the taste of his smile.

And it is the story of Marcus' scars. With hands and lips, Abby traces every mark on his body that tells of a hurt he has survived.

There is a tiny scar on his bottom lip that has been there for as long as she's known him; Abby runs her tongue over it and asks him how it got there. She doesn't expect him to snort and shake his head, and she finds herself grinning too (because his laughter is rare and she treasures it) propping herself up on his bare chest.

"What? Tell me!"

"So Jake never told you that story then?"

It only catches her off guard a little, and she wonders if it should feel stranger, lying in bed with Marcus talking about her late husband. But he's sharing a memory from their boyhood; he's giving Abby the gift of learning something new about two men she has loved deeply.

"It was a cordoned off area on Mecha, repairs or something," Marcus says, skimming his fingers up and down along her spine, "Jake dared me to go in there."

"How old were you?"

"Nine, maybe ten. You know Jake was a little older and I wanted to prove I wasn't chicken." Marcus smiles, lost in the memory, "I climbed onto some scaffolding. I remember something slid out of place under my foot, guess it hadn't been secured properly, then falling. Slammed my face into a railing or something on my way down. Blood everywhere."

"You daredevil," Abby teases, kissing the scar again, "Poor baby."

"Scared the shit out of Jake." They both laugh, "He felt so bad about it. Probably why he never told you."

They talk a lot about Jake and their childhoods that night and bask in the warmth of nostalgia. When Abby kisses Marcus it is in both love and thanks, for helping her keep the memory of Jake Griffin alive, and for making it easy for her to say his name without the shadow of guilt hanging over her.

It is the only one of Marcus' scars that carries fond memories, however. The deep horizontal cut that intersects his forearm, though long healed over, still makes her angry sometimes. They both know that anger is only borne of her fierce, protective love for him, and of her fear that he still believes himself to be as expendable as he did when he made that mark. She'd demanded an explanation when she'd also forced him to submit to a brief check over after he'd returned from his captivity.

He'd hissed as she cleaned and redressed it (not as gently as she usually would have) and watched her warily as she wrestled with the urge to yell at him for being so eager to martyr himself. For being so eager to leave _her_.

But she could not say those things then, and the anger now is just the echo of a memory when she rubs her thumb over the white line, over and over like she can erase it. Marcus lies in bed next to her and watches with knowing eyes, but says nothing because he can neither take it back nor tell her that he is sorry. This scar is the part of him that will forever be trying to atone for his sins, no matter whether he deserves to survive or not.

Opposite this mark, on the inside of his other arm, is another scar made voluntarily. Another for his people. The coalition brand was an act of violence that Marcus accepted in the pursuit of peace, and he accepted it in Abby's stead. She had said that he should be the one to bear the mark, without knowing exactly what that entailed, because he shared Lexa's vision, but she imagines he would have been the one to step up anyway, once the hot iron was revealed. Just as it didn't matter who wore the chancellor's pin, it didn't really matter which of them took the brand, they were - and always have been - leading together. Marcus will always spare her as much pain as he can though, taking the pain _for_ her if he can do nothing else.

She traces it, when he's spooned up against her back and the arm she's using as a pillow is sprawled out in front of her eyes; draws delicate circles, following the scar tissue, and watches goosebumps rising on his skin.

Marcus cradles her tighter with his other arm and nuzzles into the back of her neck, sighing,

"I look at that mark and I can't help but think about how I failed." His words are quiet, muffled by her hair, regrets and self doubt that only she is trusted with.

Of course he would he think that.

"I look at it and see the man who wanted to build a future for his people." Abby turns in his arms and strokes his face, so close to hers now that their noses are touching, and he blinks sleepily. "A man of peace..." She kisses him, soft and languid, and hitches her leg over his hip just to be closer, "The man I love."

They chase away each other's ghosts, the guilt they both still feel for the worst things they've done in the name of survival, the ways in which they feel they've failed themselves and others. The nightblood experiments still haunt her, Clarke's absence aches like a phantom limb, but Marcus' kiss tastes like absolution. The way he looks at her _still_ , like she's a miracle he doesn't deserve, full of unconditional love and support, brings her out of her despair. And she strives to do the same for him.

When the weight of the culling - both cullings - is pulling him down, and she can see the guilt crushing him, Abby holds him. She guides his face into the crook of her neck and lets him weep silent tears. His whole body shudders in her arms and all she can do is clutch him closer, run her hands through his hair and whisper her love into his skin. She tells him he is a good man and he is so much more than the impossible choices he's made, and can only pray that he hears her. Marcus clings to her like he's trying to crawl inside her and Abby shelters him as best she can. In the morning - if morning even exists down underground - his strength has returned.

She kisses the scar on his thigh when he's panting and trembling beneath her for a far more pleasurable reason. His cock is achingly hard, red, leaking, and wet from her mouth, and Abby teases him by drifting away from it. She loves having him laid out like this, completely at her mercy and happy to be there. His eyes are so, so dark as he looks down at her pleadingly, reaching for her and carding shaking fingers through her hair, but never pulling her back to where he needs her most, even as his hips arch upwards, desperately.

"Abby... Abby, please..." His voice, low and rough, stokes the fire of her own arousal, shooting to where she's already soaked and throbbing with need too. But she wants to keep him like this for a little longer: beautiful and wrecked and completely, utterly hers.

The mark where Marcus' femoral artery was lacerated, where the weight of the rubble beneath Ton DC was crushing him, reminds her of the moment she decided she could not lose him. The moment where she fought fiercely to save him, even as he urged her to leave him, to go to Clarke, to help people who deserved to be saved.

They saw the truth of each other as they always have, though it had never been more clear before, all their sins laid bare, and saw the pain that their decisions wreaked upon them reflected in each other's eyes.

"We're going to be okay," She'd said, when rescue finally came, because they had become a _we_ in her mind; a partnership, a friendship, a possibility...

Abby tastes the salt on his skin, breathes in his musky scent, trailing hot, open mouthed kisses along his inner thigh as he continues to gasp her name. Eventually she takes pity on him, wraps her hand around his cock and sucks on the head, before taking him deeper into her mouth.

Marcus makes a choked sound, "Fuck, Abby!" and she feels a thrill, as she always does when she manages to draw rare curses from his lips.

As she sets about taking him apart, she reaches out with her free hand to where Marcus is clenching the bedsheets tightly, unfurling his fingers to thread her own between them. Abby loves Marcus' hands. She loves the contrast of how powerful yet how gentle they are, graceful and strong. The way they wrap around her smaller ones, encase them, long fingers entwining with hers. Those hands have held guns and planted trees; they've soothed her to sleep and coaxed her to dizzying heights of pleasure. Abby has stroked them and named every bone out loud whilst Marcus humoured her with a delighted grin.

He could have lost his hands, or else lost the function of them, when Jaha and ALIE had him nailed to that cross. He was so damn lucky that sometimes Abby kisses his wrists and is breathless with gratitude.

Marcus' most brutal scars will always be the most painful for her to look at. The guilt is just a twinge now, faded over time and hours of making love in the days following ALIE's destruction. Hours of Marcus affirming to her that he did not blame her, that it wasn't her, that this could never come between them; what they have is far too strong.

He comes now on a guttural cry and her mouth is flooded with his taste. He pants as she lets him slip from between her lips, then pulls her up into his arms, kissing her slow and deep. Abby scratches her nails lightly through his beard, and Marcus makes a contented rumbly sound in his throat that makes her think of a big cat purring. Then he starts making his way slowly, determinedly, down her body.

"Your turn."

What Abby doesn't know is that Marcus has his own map, and he uses it now to make her body sing. Fingers and lips, tongue and teeth, all seeking out unerringly the places that make her sigh and moan and writhe beneath him.

Marcus knows Abby's scars too; he knows them by heart. They all serve as a testament to the fathomless strength of the woman he loves, and he traces and kisses them as she does his:

With reverence and respect and remembrance.


End file.
